In describing the invention along with the background thereof, certain documents are either explicitly discussed or are relevant sources of background information. These documents are indicated by number (e.g. "document 1") throughout the remainder of the specification and are identified immediately prior to the claims. The present application incorporates by reference the entire contents of each of these documents.
Biologically active substances are often produced in relatively small quantities in processes wherein the desired final product is frequently in the presence of other, perhaps numerous, undesired compounds, mixtures, etc. The cost in terms of time, money, or equipment of isolating and/or purifying the desired product from the undesired product can be very significant. The cost for these post-production processes is ultimately borne by the purchaser of the desired product. As such, there is a continuing need in the art for materials and/or processes that improve the isolation and/or purification of compounds produced by biotechnological processes.
Existing isolation and/or purification techniques may include: (i) multistep bulk processes such as fractional crystallization; distillation, etc; or (ii) reactant conditions designed to produce only the desired product. The disadvantages of the techniques of (i) include relativity complicated processing and possible purification problems. The disadvantages of the techniques of (ii) include the high costs of obtaining such reactant conditions. For example, by using only particular enantiomers of particular reactants, it is possible to obtain a relatively high degree of purity in a desired chiral product (i.e., a unique enantiomer of the desired product). However, this process necessitates controlling the exact stereochemistry of all of the individual reactions which culminate in the formation of the desired enantiomeric product. This stereochemically control requires the use of particular enantiomeric forms of all the reactant compounds and is accordingly relatively expensive as compared to running reactions without using enantiomerically-pure compounds.
As will be apparent to those workers of ordinary skill in the art, the present invention directed to magnetically susceptible polymer particles having specifically-tailored adsorptivities and to processes employing such particles represents a patentable advance in the art and offers advantages over existing techniques.